


To Hide in Death Awhile

by glorious_spoon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:17:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam, Death, and second chances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Hide in Death Awhile

_It's the moments between that he can never remember. The moments between oblivion and awareness are always empty; they leave no traces in his mind._  
  
He's ten years old, suddenly, the cold lake water closing over his head, skates heavy on his feet and the surface just beyond his grasp.  
  
There's panic, struggling, coat twisting and weighting him down, hands reaching for air and light like he can pull it down to him, lungs burning. Then nothing.  
  
He wakes, that time, to Dad's hands on his face, the low rumble of his voice, terror and relief under the growl. "Dean, go get the car."  
  
Dean seems so young, wet hair and patchy stubble, skin white beneath his freckles. "Yessir," he says, but he's staring at Sam coughing and retching his guts out on the snowy ground.  
  
"I meant  _now,_  Dean--"  
  
 _\--Dean isn't here. He can remember that sometimes. Dean isn't here, and that's a mercy. That's the only mercy he's going to get. Sometimes he forgets--_  
  
\--knife slipping between his ribs so hard and fast that he can't even feel the pain until it's already out, the momentum of his steps carrying him forward onto his knees, Dean running toward him, shouting, Dean's arms around him, hands rough and frantic.  
  
"--not even that bad, it's not even that bad, Sammy," while mud soaks through his jeans and blood soaks through his shirt and the world slips through his fingers.  
  
His last thought is that Dean really sucks at lying to himself.  
  
The bed he wakes up on is mildewy and stinks of blood. There's a broken whiskey bottle in the corner and his skin, beneath his seeking fingers, is whole and undamaged.   
  
He already knows something is wrong even before Dean hauls him into a bone-crushing hug and won't explain what the hell happened.  
  
 _Dean, he thinks. Dean, Dean, Dean is the only name that lives in his mind now. There were others. Once. Begging and pleading and please stop please stop I'll do anything--_  
  
\--and the bullet catches him in the chest in a fireburst of blood and pain, world going dark as he falls back against the bed.  
  
He wakes to bloody clothes and a dirty motel room, Dean dangerously silent in the other bed--  
  
 _\--the cage is all there is. All there is, him and the cage and the two things that share it with him, and he's a chew toy caught between two fighting dogs.  
  
They never look outside. They're focused inward, consumed by their own rage.  
  
He looks, sometimes. Even after he's forgotten the world he left, forgotten how to fight, how to speak, forgotten his own name, sometimes he still looks at the shining bars that hold them, stares like he can see through to what's on the other side.  
  
That's probably why he sees them shifting, twisting apart while the others notice nothing at all._  
  
The gray sky spins above him, the ground gaping beneath him, a yawning tunnel that leads nowhere on this earth. In the dirt by the Impala, Dean sprawls in a boneless heap. His face is an unrecognizable pulp of blood and bruising.  
  
And Bobby's dead. And Cas is dead, and Lucifer claws at his mind like a rat in a trap. Sam can't hold him for much longer, he knows.   
  
Dean will live. He holds that thought close as Michael lunges toward him, as his fingers find their grip on the angel's borrowed arm. Dean's going to live. Dean's going to go to Lisa and Ben, and he'll live. He'll be okay.  
  
Sam breathes in once, the taste of cold, damp air and the lingering exhaust of the Impala's engine, and falls.  
  
 _Reality ripples. The bars of Lucifer's cage bend, and Death steps through._  
  
 _It isn't the face he wore in the world above. It isn't a face at all, really, but Sam knows him._  
  
 _Sam has, perhaps, always known him._  
  
He opens his eyes strapped to a bed in Bobby's panic room. An old man with depthless, terrible eyes leans over him for a moment, then he's gone.  
  
A hand closes on his shoulder, holding on just a little too tight, and he doesn't even need to move his head to know it's Dean. "Hey, Sammy."  
  
His lips are dry; he licks them with a tongue that feels like sandpaper. "Dean."  
  
"You with us? Is that you in there?"  
  
"Yeah," Sam murmurs, eyes slipping closed. "I'm here."


End file.
